The year 1937 – a symbol of the repressions carried out in the USSR. Till nowadays many are convinced that repressions took place exclusively in 1937. Khrushchev carelessly gave rise to the myth that persecutions were mainly directed against the elite (great purge).
Myths of this kind are very popular but utterly dangerous, for they represent the fundament of today’s stalinism. Today’s average citizen realites Stalin as a very severe and rigid, but just dictator, who did right to punish slovenly, negligent functionaries.
Pepole are easily convinced that all this is nothing but amyth.
In the martyrology or in the Book of Memory party and state functionaries merely represent a low percentage (and those who are mentioned were not persecuted for having committed corruption – they were said to hav carried on espionage in favour of the English or Japanese).
Practically all who were repressed for political motives are from among the working class, farmers, the intelligentsia – they were the very people, in the name of which the Bolshevists committed their crimes.
Functionaries are neither mentioned in the Decree of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Russisn Communist Party (Bolsheviks) N°. P51/94 of the 2 July 1937, nor in the Operative Order of the People’s Commissar of internal Affairs of the USSR N°.00447 of the 30 July 1937, on the basis of which they carried out military operations against their own people. Operations, which were later called “The Great Terror”. The actions were directed against “former kulaks, people who had been persecuted before, but succeeded in hiding away from those who came for them, individuals who had escaped from camps, places of internal exile or labor columns, […], clergymen and members of sects, who had already experienced repressions in the past, […], as well as anti-Soviet political parties” – i.e. mainly all those, who had already been victims of reprisals at an earlier date. Indeed, for many functionaries this obviously was a topical occasion to square with people, in order to then make a brilliant career for themselves. Yes, Stalin and the likes of him all “imperceptibly and secretly” reduced the leading cadre units “to a common denominator” – by finally establishing an authoritative “vertical line”. This, however, has nothing to do with the strenghtening of legality or the restoration of justice.
The symbolic meaning of “the year 1937” dismisses the fact from people’s conscience that repressions in the USSR were being carried out permanently, on a large scale and in various ways: deportations of entire people, dekulakization, deprivation of liberty, etc.
Nonetheless this symbol has the right to exist. Continuous Soviet measures of persecution form the usual background of the Great Terror Period (1937-1938), which is even more shocking for its unbelievable cruelty and horrendous proportions. We may say with every justification that this period was a national catastrophy.
Between August 1937 and November 1938 they sentenced 12603 individuals in Krasnoyarsk Territory to execution, 5529 to long-term sentences in camps – all of them were convicted of political motives. Here we would like to mention that the troykas in Krasnoyarsk altogether tried 19652 cases. Merely 1520 of the accused were sentenced on common sections of the criminal code, while 18132 individuals were charged with political motives (a fact which disproves another Stalin myth pretending that political prisoners make up a very low percentages among the victims of repression).